WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp News, WordPress 2.7, Lester Chan Plugins Famous, Super Cache Updated

Lorelle VanFossen

Oct. 09, 2008
8 min read

More WordCamp announcements and news. WordPress 2.7 information such as impact on Theme developers with comments and parent/child Themes. Lester Chan’s WordPress Plugins can be found on famous blogs. WP Super Cache updated and faster than ever. And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.7: The following are articles and posts with information you need to know for WordPress 2.7 if you are a developer, WordPress Theme or Plugin author.

Sivel – Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7
Ottodestruct – WordPress 2.7 Comments Enhancements for Themes
WordCamp NYC: Matt Mullenweg on the State of Wordpress also gives a walk through of WordPress 2.7 (video)
Look under WordPress Themes and Plugins news for information on the new Parent/Child Theme structure in WordPress 2.7.

WordPress 2.7 Development: As development of WordPress 2.7 nears the freeze date, the WordPress Development Updates is firing up with a lot of action. Some development news includes threaded comments and the new Comments API, Quick Edit for Tags, Categories, and Link Categories, TinyMCE updated and improved for caching in Google Gears and browsers resulting in speeding up Write and Edit page by 40%, increasing content area for writing blog posts, implementation of some WordPress 2.7 Wireframe features, a comment type filter for the edit-comments.php Comments Panel to view all types of comments including trackbacks and pingbacks, batch editing for posts and Pages, comment paging, drafts now have real timestamp, drafts now ordered properly in the All Posts timeline, improvements in custom fields, the addition of “Close comments for old posts” to the Settings > Discussion, a Themes update API, and improvements to the Administration Panels and styles.

Portland, Oregon, Having a WordPress Upgrade Party: After the very successful WordCamp Portland, Portland WordPress fans are having a semi-un-not-so-official Wordpress Upgrade Party at CubeSpace on Nov 10, 2008. Are you having a WordPress Upgrade Party with your community’s WordPress fans?

WordPress 2.7 Wireframes: Jane Wells revealed the WordPress 2.7 Wireframes, the graphic draft versions being tested for the development of the new WordPress 2.7 and future version Administration Panels and interface. A work-in-process, the PDF files are going around the web and serve as guides not final versions of the interface. These are constantly in fluctuation as testing and updates are ongoing.

WordCast Podcast: Recent shows for WordCast include WordCast 30: Vlad Conquers All includes one of WordPress’s prolific WordPress Plugin developers, Vladimir Prelovac, and the previous episode was WordCast 29: I’m Your Fairy Blogmother!, featuring Lorelle VanFossen with updates on WordCamp Portland, Blog World Expo, WordCamp Denver, Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, Martha Stewart, WordPress for iPhone, WordPress 2.7, and more WordPress tips.

WordPress Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Episode 23 covered the acquisition of IntenseDebate by Automattic, WordPress 2.7, WordPress usability surveys, comment enhancements, and more WordPress news.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Final Features, WTC Plugin Contest Winners, WordCamps, Surveys, and More.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change).

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

WordCamp Indy (Indianaplois)
WordCamp Augusta
WordCamp Miami

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News

PodCamp/WordCamp Hawaii: Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii is Oct 24, 2008, and they have their own television commercial!

WordCamp Charlotte: WordCamp Charlotte is now open for registration for the November 15 event. The prices are a bit odd. The first 40 to sign up get in for USD $15 each and the next batch of 40 get in for $20. Does that mean the event is limited to only 80 attendees? Or that the next batch of 40 will have to pay $40? Remember that WordCampRDU has been suspended and is now combined with the WordCamp event in Charlotte. Volunteers and sponsors are still being sought.

WordPress Bangkok Thailand: WordPress Bangkok Thailand plans are underway for October 19, 2008. You can also find more information at the WordCamp Bangkok Kapook site.

WordCampED: WordCampED for educators is now set for November 22, 2008, at at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. Registration is free and open, though donations are welcome. The WordCamp event will be focused entirely on the educational uses of WordPress and feature speakers and barcamp-style presentations. They are working on taking these events around the country, so contact them if you are interested in having a WordCampED in your community.

WordCamp Denver: WordCamp Denver 2008 has set their event date for January 24, 2009. They are still working on a location.

WordCamp Argentina: WordCamp Argentina is in the plans. Stay tuned for more news.

Past WordCamp Events

WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama: It appears that WordCamp Birmingham was a success. You can find slides from the event speakers on SlideShare and watch the speakers on the Ustream Video of the vent.

WordCamp Utah: Joseph Scott offers a recap of WordCamp Utah covering the bascis of the event attended by 135 people. Couchcast featured a variety of video interviews of Matt Mullenweg and other attendees and sponsors of the event.

WordCamp Tokyo: WordCamp Tokyo was September 23 in Shibuya. Detlog offers a summary, including information that for several years, WordPress meetups have been very popular, leading towards the first WordCamp event in Japan. Michael Pick from Automattic presented a program on “Lightbulb moments with WordPress.” Other speakers covered WordPress Plugin and Theme development and customization, localization and translation issues, WordPressMU, and Mozilla Japan and Adobe integration.

WordCamp Birmingham: WordCamp Birmingham was last weekend and Dougal Gunters offers a summary of the event.

WordCamp Portland and the Fairy Blogmother: WordCamp Portland began with an appearance by Lorelle VanFossen as the WordPress Fairy Blogmother giving a presentation on how WordPress changes lives. Between that and a very social media aware community, WordCamp Portland was the most popular hashtag discussion on Twitter by early afternoon. WordCamp Portland offers a roundup of the event coverages, as did Silicon Florist, Viper X Blog, Critical Games, Eric Stoller, Oak Hazelnut, and OurPDX. There are tons of photos on flickr, too.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, as many track WordPress event announcements there. Also, check out the latest WordCamp news from The WordCamp Report.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

Parent and Child Theme Confusion in WordPress 2.7: With WordPress 2.7 comes a new layer to WordPress Themes: Parent and Child Themes. Traditionally, when WordPress loads a Theme, it pulls it from its Theme directory. With WordPress 2.7, you can have two Theme directories, a “parent” directory which holds the downloaded Theme, and a “child” directory which holds the core changes and modifications of a Parent WordPress Theme. This new layered approach protects WordPress Themes along with the automatic Theme updating and loading. Instead of making changes in the Theme itself, you make modifications in the Child Theme. WordPress looks for information there before it loads the Parent Theme, protecting the core Theme while allowing modifications from the Child Theme. Ian Steward of Themeshaper.com was interviewed by Weblog Tools Collection and explains this thoroughly in
Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 – Part 1 and Part 2. The article also references another by Stewart on the new functions.php for child Themes. Also check out the article by Jacob Santos on the hazards of customizing Themes in WordPress 2.7 and why the Parent/Child Theme technique is a good one.

WP Super Cache Updated: Donncha has announced that his WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin has been updated to include double caching, making it faster than ever. The update also includes fixes for Internet Explorer 7.

WordPress Plugin Brags: With a right to brag, Lester Chan showcases a few famous sites using WordPress and his WordPress Plugins such as:

Ford Motor Company Global Auto Cars Shows – WP-Post Ratings
Mashable – WP-Post Ratings
The Martha Stewart Blog – WP-Polls
Wall Street Journal Blog – WP-Print

Woopra WordPress Plugin: The Woopra WordPress Plugin has been updated to include real-time site searches. The Woopra team has announced that it will soon close applications for beta testers when the number hits 50,000. Woopra will be open for new users and out of beta testing soon.

Where are Plugin Settings? The rule of thumb for WordPress Plugins has been to add a Plugin’s Panel to the Plugins panel, unless it is a Plugin that is used as part of the day-to-day management of the WordPress blog, such as Akismet which is integrated into the Comments Panel appropriatesly. In Where Is That Settings Page?, Jeffro from Weblog Tools Collection points to an article by Andrew Rickmann offering some suggestions on a new location. Richmann recommends a “configuration” link next to the Activate and Deactivate links. This is a great suggestion for Plugins which are not critical to blog management.

Nathan Rice Offers the Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO: While many try to give you the low down or high up on SEO with WordPress, Nathan Rice brings a few years of experience as a top WordPress Theme developer and designer to his series on WordPress and SEO. So far, the series includes a lot of WordPress Theme tips and techniques:

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

ZdMultilang WordPress Plugin is a new multilingual Plugin for those who blog in more than one language. It adds abilities for multiple langues with posts, tags, and categories from the Administration Panel.
Find and Replacer WordPress Plugin helps you search and replace tags and text in your WordPress blog.
Update URLs WordPress Plugin updates permalinks when you move your WordPress blog to a new domain or directory.
WordPress Menu Creator WordPress Plugin adds a configurable menu for WordPress sites designed by the Brokers Edge.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some interesting WordPress tips I’ve found as I explore the web looking for WordPress resources:

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com September Stats: In the September Wrap-Up, WordPress.com announced 334,004 blogs were created and 335,693 new members. Over 489 terabytes of content was transferred from their datacenters, with 952,281,311 pageviews on WordPress.com, and another 694,985,128 on self-hosted blogs (1,647,266,439 total across all WordPress blogs — a jump of 191,084,227 views since last month). The news also included an attendee count for WordCamps around the world. There were seven WordCamps in September, four on the same day.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Logos: The official WordPress logos are available on WordPress as are WordPress fan art featuring variations on the WordPress logo and artwork.

Things You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:

WordPress Facebook Community: WordPress on Facebook
WordPress Schwag for Sale: WordPress Shop
WordPress Bugs: Reporting Bugs in WordPress
Online WordPress Manual: WordPress Codex
Have Your Say: WordPress Ideas
WordPress Experts Found: Automattic WordPress Consultants List, WordPress Jobs, and the WP-Pro mailing list
Help Installing WordPress: Installing WordPress for Free
WordPress is Trademarked: You are not allowed to use WordPress in your domain name
WordPress is WordPress: It’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

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Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

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Lorelle VanFossen

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.